Well, it's all set now. I'm moving to San Francisco. I've scheduled to have my stuff shipped on June 3rd (by ABF U-Pack) and have my car shipped out on June 4th or 5th (by Reliable Auto Movers) and myself flown out June 6th (by Delta Airlines).

One month and one week. After that I will become a resident of California.

Yesterday I went to my graduation ceremony. I now have (ceremonially) a masters degree in Library and Information Science.
I still don't quite feel it yet. I have a little bit of classwork to complete today (I took one class online through U of Illinois, who has slightly different semesters). I also will feel much better once I have the degree in hand. I may be a pessimist, but there's still room for things to go wrong, for some paperwork to have not been filled out properly, or for something unexpected to come to light. At the graduation, we got a 'teaser' certificate which says we should get our real degree around mid-June.

The first event to put both my parents in the same space with after the divorce was expectedly awkward but no explosions. Ceremony, social time at my house, and out to late lunch, all went smoothly. And again, Harris Grill rocked.

I'll be now working full time on job hunting. I'm putting together an e-portfolio on my web site for showing to interviewers. If any of you web dev. gurus out there would like to take a look and give me some constructive criticism, I'd absolutely love it. I'll have it at http://kt.digitalfreaks.org/professional (doesn't have much at the moment. Criticism will be needed after I have a chance to work on it this week). I now have dreamweaver to help me with this effort.

Scheduling my move to San Francisco is complicated but I'm confident it will work out. I expect to be moved by the end of June.

Next week I run in my second half-marathon. This one with hills. I'm a bit intimidated by the hills, but confident that I can complete it. This one will be in Cincinnati, where I went to school for my undergrad degree.

I've been knitting lately. I finished my first shirt, and am working on  a pair of tall socks. Then I'll take some time to make some little socks that are more appropriate to the season. Also, someone suggested entering into a sock design/knitting competition, which I'm rather excited about. I have a neat idea for some tall socks for it. (I just started doing this, so I don't really expect to win, but I think it'll be a lot of fun to enter, and who knows.) [by the way, I'm katidid on ravelry.com]

I had this post in my head yesterday, but spent more of my day out enjoying the weather, and neglected to getting around to posting it. I'm not sure how much of the feeling I have left to post, but oh well.

I went running in short sleeves. I felt like flying.
This is the day when I feel as if I've crossed over into some magical fairy land. Some land where warmth actually emanates from the sky. It always feels magical like that the first time after a long, cold winter. It feels like remembering what happiness is.

Now, I knew it was to be short lasting. It's a tease. And today confirms that, with the cold and rain that is more iconic for Pittsburgh. However, that doesn't matter. That day is just the first. Days like that will be back, and soon. It's that first warm, tease day that always feels like the start of a new year to me. (I never did like the idea of the new year being celebrated in the middle of the winter.)

So, happy "New Year" everyone.
Happy First Spring Tease Day!
I hope it had a powerful effect on you as well.

[and in the end, writing this brings back that feeling just a bit. :-) ]

So, and I didn't even know about these until drspookyand talldeansuggested it to dellamortaand I, but apparently there are regional smaller events connected to BurningMan. Playa del Fuego takes place in some small fields in Delaware. It was a whole lot of fun. This definitely motivates me to be more adamant about going to BurningMan (which has so far been out of my budget).

I was not quite prepared for the August weather in October and have come back resembling a lobster and hating anything that goes on my shoulders. However, it was a really good time. I really liked the atmosphere. There's a good distribution of 'party responsibility' there, where there is little centralization, and each theme camp has something different to offer. I was trying to describe to dellamortawhat it was I liked about the atmosphere, the lack of a feel of elitism. I thought and realized, no one ever in my earshot, said anything negative about anyone else's camp. I could easily imagine this theme camp thing getting competitive, with people wanting to outdo each other. However, I heard nothing even vaguely similar to a "meh. that camp was better last year." or "this camp is better than that camp." or even any nostalgia to some "it was better back in the day." all of these sorts of sentiments were completely missing, at least from what I witnessed. (I understand that I'm a new person there, and maybe I just didn't see this part of these groups, yet.) This was very refreshing. 

The idea of a 'gift economy' was also amazingly refreshing. I was notified in advance, that it was not a barter-economy here, but a gift-economy. Things, and services are freely given away, with no recompense expected. This works really nicely. People were making and doing things, just to do them. There was the Iced-Coffee guy,  who made the most amazing iced coffee I've ever tasted. "Jamaican Jerk" camp made the most amazing chicken ever. (dellamorta, I think this one may actually compete with the random stand we found in the middle of nowhere Ohio on the way back from origins that time. You think?) I tried to give books away, but generally failed to take them with me while out wandering around and our camp was a bit out of the way and low traffic for good giving position.

It was a good and exhausting weekend. I  think I needed a good fun weekend about now, too.

59:49
:-)
I got this idea to try to run it in under an hour. It's tougher than anything I've done.

I definitely pushed myself to my limit. It was really good.

Now I need sleep.

About a year ago, I began to be motivated to start running. Taking some inspiration from martinivixen, and considering my own best means for motivation, I thought about the idea of including a goal of eventually running races. (You see, I have a hard time doing something, like exercise, on a regular basis, just for the sake of doing it, no matter all the good reasons for doing so. I really need to have a specific goal in mind to keep me going.)

I decided to start a Couch-to-5K program. Right as I was beginning, I started to see advertisements for The Great Race. I thought, "I'm going to run that next year. That'll be a good goal." I assumed I'd be running the 5K version. In the mean time, I completed the 5K program by December, stuck with running through the winter (with motivational help from dellamorta, who has been my partner in all of this, through the good times and the bad), ran in my first 5K in march, and participated in the Race for the Cure in May. In the process, I thought of a vague goal of maybe someday running a marathon. This idea has since developed into a more concrete goal: maybe I can build all the way to a half-marathon this year, and if I can do that, next year I could train for a marathon. This seems, all considering, like much less of the crazy idea it would have seemed to me a year ago. Right now, I am registered to run in the Half-Marathon segment of the Philadelphia Marathon in mid-November. I've got a plan I'm following, and this really seems like an attainable goal. I then have concrete intentions to run in next year's Chicago Marathon.

I honestly had no idea one could make so much athletic progress in only one year. I have never been much of an athlete. I wasn't really involved in any athletics in school, nor did I have any particularly active hobbies. I've never been what could be called "fit" or "in shape". One year ago, I was truly the example of "Couch" in "Couch to 5K". I remember distinctly that running half way around our 1K track was a serious challenge. I would never have comprehended, had anyone tried to tell me, that in a year I'd be running in this race as a 10K and looking forward to a half-marathon in only a few months. I am becoming an athlete. It's rather surprising, and honestly really neat.

The races have served their purpose. More than once the idea of being on a plan for race-running kept me sticking to my regular runs, when I know I wouldn't have otherwise. However, along the way, I also discovered that I really enjoy the races. They are simply a lot of fun, and participating in them feels quite rewarding.

So, getting to the point of this post, tomorrow morning, at precisely 9:30am, I will be running in my Great Race, as intended. Due to the motivation and inspiration it gave me for this past year, this is a particularly meaningful race for me, and also as I expect it to be a start of more particularly meaningful races. It is a conclusion of an important first goal and the beginning of becoming more of an athlete. I find this athleticism as a way of becoming in touch with my physical body in a way that I hadn't experienced before. (I tend to be much more of a mind-focused person.) This is very exciting for me.

I don't think I mentioned here, but I got into a program to study in Berlin for two months this summer. I'm going to be studying the language and more. I'll be trying to still take an online class for my MLIS (maybe. my teacher is now giving me a hard time about not coming to the mandatory 1 weekend attendance.) I actually just purchased my flight tickets today. I'll be flying with Aer Lingus, with stopovers in Boston and Dublin. Has anyone heard of this airline? How is it? I'm already starting to feel the nervous/excited emotions. That's a long time away from home and my friends. That's also a serious commitment to try to speak this language. Will I be able to communicate? Without them changing over to english?

I ran in my first 5K race yesterday! It felt really good. I'm really excited about my running plan. (Which consists of running in 5K races while building up distance and doing the 10K at the Great Race in the Fall.)

Another race I'm scheduled for is the Race for the Cure. Which is a big one that does fundraising for Breast Cancer research. If any of you would like to donate money to support that charity in my name, the link to do that is: http://rfcptt.convio.net/goto/Katie.Boyd.

School is going well, but I have lots to do. (So don't be surprised if I may be less social from now 'till the end of the semester.) I have my first library conference next week in Baltimore. I am quite excited for it.

So, I thought I'd be more immune to this for this program as it's something I'm very interested in and excited about, but it seems some old patterns with school die hard.

I start off the semester with great excitement and grand ambitious plans of the great things I'm going to do, the extra work I'm going to put in and the wonderful projects that are going to be better than expected. Then I hit mid-semester and find myself struggling to find motivation to do the class readings and keep up on my assigned projects. This is usually followed by another spurt of energy at the end of the semester to still end up pretty good, but no where near the wonderful things I had imagined at the beginning, which is always a disappointment for me. I really naively thought that wouldn't happen for this.

The management class is the worst. It's not interesting and it has a lot of work, which takes up time I want to spend on the classes I'm interested in.
But I know it's not just the management class. If it was I'd be better able to just focus on my other work and keep the excitement.
It's not even just class in general. I'm not exercising, not sleeping, not eating right. I'm just in a life slump.

Oh look! and I'm posting in my lj again! I wish I could disconnect the posting from the feeling bad, but oh well, I've already written this much. I might as well post it. I'll try to follow up with a good post when I feel better to balance it.

Does anyone have any good ways of getting out of the mid-semester slump?

My new temp assignment is as a receptionist at a small elementary school, K-5, in East Liberty. It's... very different for me.